>> the only reward will be transaction fees. Miners will make more in transaction fees, if they make the network faster and blocks larger. At today's tiny blocksize you are seeing as much ast 4 BTC/block in fees.
>> Bitcoin has proven to be: non-scalable, expensive, and unreliable.
The bitcoin developers and miners have actively chosen to make it this way. It is literally a 5 minute code change to move to one block per minute and 8MB blocks. That'll take it from 4 transactions per second to 300.
The kicker to this is miners will make a lot more money if they do this. Spending BTC is a pain today because of these limitations. Remove the limitations and you get more transactions and fees.
>> The fundamental problem with BitCoin is that the number of transactions it can handle is orders of magnitude below what is necessary for a reasonably liquid currency with a total value in the billions of dollars.
Parent is spot on. The root problems are that there aren't enough transactions in blocks and the blocks aren't frequent enough. The people that insist that Bitcoin should just be a settlement mechanism are stunting the most revolutionary technology in the last 20 years.
I can't understand why miners don't get behind this. The last block to get mined had 4BTC in fees in it. More transactions means more fees. If you triple the number of transactions in the block, that could be 12 BTC or double the block reward. Why is that even a question?
With the utmost of respect my wallaby friend, your argument is based on the idea that we never clean up after ourselves, and we constantly get worse until the point where we will extinguish ourselves entirely.
Perhaps I'm short-sighted or naive, but I don't see that as the case. We feed more people on less land today than we ever have in our history, and our standard of living is better than it has ever been. More importantly, our rate of technical progress is faster than it has ever been.
No, we don't clean up our superfund sites to the way they were before mankind touched them. We can't. Despite that, we are working aggressively not to create new ones. Global production of both PCBs and CFCs is lower now than it has been in decades. Fracking is dramatically cleaner than coal. Water treatment is better than just dumping it into rivers. To my admittedly optimistic eye it does look like we are cleaning up.
There is one area where we aren't cleaning up though, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. That sore spot is global carbon dioxide production. For us to clean this up we need power generation methods that don't require us to dig up dinosaurs and no amount of energy conservation will solve this problem. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in medieval squalor, and they are polluting like crazy just to stay alive. The standard of living for those people will increase, or they will turn to violence and be completely justified in doing so.
So how do you clean this up? You need a power generation method with zero CO2 emissions, and you need it to scale to meet global demands. You need it to not require strip mining the worlds poorest places for rare earths. You need it not to produce long-lived radioactive wastes, and you need it to be dirt cheap, too. That technology is probably space based solar power, and to build it we need a bunch of bigass heavy lift rockets. To build those rockets we have to test smallass heavy lift rockets, and those rockets need a payload. If that payload is a shiny red Tesla from the guy that is going to dominate the renewable energy market in the next decade then I am absolutely fine with cleaning that particular mess up later.
I agree with Mr. Prince, and I respect that he's willing to risk his name and company to stand behind his beliefs.
The Anarchist's cookbook is Illegal in Australia. Possession of the book is enough to get you arrested in the UK. China's great firewall is tighter than ever. Censorship is alive and well in the modern world, and I do not see that as progress.
What happened to: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."?
Let's spitball it at $100 per kilo. That puts it roughly double first-class halfway-round-the-world airfare today. For comparison, the Space Shuttle was $18,000 per kilo. The Falcon 9, to LEO, is $3,000 per kilo.
>> Why the fuck would average joe want to fly to space?
Short List:
Tourism.
Rapid transit from place-to-place on Earth.
Space-based solar power can ~Solve~ the root cause of climate change.
Trillions in precious metals and other resources in Asteroids.
>> Do we really want to turn Mars into a publicity stunt laden dumping ground?
Yes. Yes we do.
The only way an average Joe is ever going to get affordable commercial space travel is if the "Only governments can do spaceflight" meme dies a fiery death. Putting a Tesla around Mars is a fantastic way to light that pyre.
If the BFR delivers on its promise of dirt-cheap space travel we can tidy up after ourselves later.
>> Most of the "automated vehicle is hacked" type of potential requires direct access to the vehicle in the first place. eg you can hack most CANBUS II equipped vehicles, and insurance companies willingness to adopt CANBUS dongles for insurance purposes is the easy target.
Most, but not all. There have been at least two successful compromises of production vehicles via the IP connected entertainment system. It's also worth noting that RF keyless remote systems are usually directly integrated into the ECU, and there are in-the-wild vehicle-unlocking exploits against those. It is not unimaginable that there are other exploits against that system.
>> Frankly, I'm suprised that a black hat hacker or terrorist hasn't already found a way to hack the autopilot system in a Model S in order to use it as a weapon.
There are some who believe that vehicle hacks have already been militarized and used for targeted killings. Until someone leaks proof, that remains the province of conspiracy theory.
>> $500-$1000 quads CAN carry a bit more weight, but at a major reduction in flight time and range, as well as speed and the ability to fly in a stiff breeze.... >> You're probably better off just throwing the pipe bomb with your hand.
ISIS has published a highlight reel of effective attacks with the weapons you describe as ineffective or implausible.
The video is here. This shows people dying. NSFW, NSF-Children, NSF-Snowflakes.
>> They will just define accurate as within a hundred miles of the official target and anyone within that region as enemy.
You aren't wrong. In Afghanistan the definition of a militant for the purpose of counting civilian casualties was "all military-age males in a strike zone".
Said another way, if we blew up a male aged 15-35 it was cool, because he was a "terrorist".
If you haven't seen how Microsoft has changed the new update notes you should seriously have another look. i.e. https://support.microsoft.com/...
From that one page you can see all of the updates for Windows 10 all the way back to RTM, the KBs for each, and the version numbers for each. It's much better than it used to be.
Part of my day job* is helping my customers figure out why machines have BSODs. Very often this is driver issues. That means I spend a lot of time fishing for new drivers and looking at the release notes.
If I could, I would ask very nicely that driver publishers to include specifics about what issues are fixed when drivers are updated. If you fixed an issue that was causing 0x9 Power state transition failure BSODs in your Video driver, then please put that in the notes. Also, if it's not too much trouble please keep a running history in the changelog so I can open the changelog for version 5.10 and see what changed in 5.10, 5.09, and 5.08 without having to go fish for the release notes for each version.
I would also ask hardware vendors that repackage drivers (e.g. HP and Dell) to publish the original driver release notes instead of just a file that says "Upgrades driver to version x.yy"
* I'm a Windows Platforms DSE for Microsoft. The above is my own opinion, and not that of my employer or paid shilling for them.
>> There are some people who legitimately do a lot of work that legitimately involves lots of meetings but who do not rise to the level of needing a secretary to organize their day for them. For them calendaring is probably useful.
It's not just calendaring. It's "I need to schedule a meeting with these people, when are most of them available, and can I book a conference room too." e.g. Room resource mailboxes and free/busy data.
It's also not-having to remember their email addresses and having an Address list to look them up in and an org chart so you can figure out who the hell wxyyzz is.
It's being able to double-click a name and get the person's phone number, job title, and office location.
It's autoresponses and rules that can be configured in the mail client and work when the client is offline.
It seems stupid, but it's the little headshot pictures in Outlook/Skype for Business that help you know who you are talking to.
It's the ability to delegate mailbox permissions to your admin, and share malboxes among teams.
It's public folders and organizational forms that populate sql databases and PowerBI reports. It's 3rd party product integration for Data Loss Prevention and eDiscovery.
It's a whole bunch of things. Calling it "email and calendars" is calling a cruise ship a boat.
(I work for Microsoft; the above is my opinion and not that of my employer. Yes, I know that because I get a paycheck from them my opinion is automatically invalid. Thanks.)
I just bought my daughter (13) a used Surface Pro 4. She loves to draw, and the touch+pen were killer features for her. She takes care of her kit, and it's in a case so I don't worry about her breaking it.
I, on the other hand, am a klutz. If it were for me I'd buy something that could take more physical abuse. I used to have a Lenovo W520 and W540. I loved those, with the exception of their weight, and would probably look in that family.
Back to Software, whatever browser you choose, get an adblocker. Ad Networks are the primary distribution mechanism for malware now.
Fourteen is old enough to teach them to use a password keeper, and keep the file on dropbox or onedrive. Build that habit now and their future self will thank you.
Create a personal email, e.g. deathlord982 at somedomain.com email and a realname email now. Teach them to use the personal for fun stuff and realname for School stuff. Separating fun and work is a good habit to get into now too.
Teach them to put a post-it over the webcam. Yes, that's a thing.
Other Free software worth getting: Gimp, Inkscape, VLC, and Paint.Net
You'll probably want the Steam and Origin clients, Discord, and TeamSpeak.
If you want to teach them 3d modeling, ZBrush and AutoDesk Fusion 360 are amazing. I think that both are free for hobbyists.
I chose to log in to my Microsoft live Account on my personal laptop instead of creating a local account.
My primary motivation was so I could store my bitlocker recovery key in the cloud.
I don't regret doing it though. I installed Cortana on my Android phone and signed in there so I could send reminders from my phone to my PC. Now I get a popup on my PC when I get a text message and a warning when the battery on my phone is low. Pretty cool.
Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft as a PFE, but this is not paid shilling. This is on my personal machine, not company kit.
The HP laptop I was looking at yesterday in Best buy had the HP Recovery Manager, HP Support Assistant, HP Games Powered by WildTangent, HP ePrint, Netflix, HP CoolSense, McAfee LiveSafe, CyberLink Power Media Player, and Dropbox on it.
FTFY, "5. He, and team, went back and redid analysis without data fiddling and came back with the same results as the IPCC."
Actually, no, you didn't FTFM. The last IPCC report, the one that was marched into the Paris Accords, makes a number of claims that are not based in scientific fact, and he debunks them quite thoroughly. Mr. Muller asserts, and I agree, that you will not convert climate skeptics by lying to them or throwing out doomsday scenarios with million-to-one odds against them happening. The facts are what they are; trying to make them look worse only hurts your credibility.
Wouldn't the hypersonic exhaust of the decelerating engine effectively flush out any gas you put in the trough?
If they get the rockets to land back on their mounts this becomes more workable. Just have the mount spray the rocket.
Landings like this one are exciting. SpaceX wasn't sure they'd be able to land the GTO payload boosters, and they've managed to do it a couple of times now. Sweet!
>> my major complaint is that it is impossible to get correct information from anywhere... they come up with the conclusion, and then try to find evidence to back it up. That's not how science works.
AC, I agree with you entirely. It's a real problem. I've found one person who speaks about this in an honest data driven way, that is willing to cut through the hype and hyperbole. His name is Dr. Richard Muller at http://berkeleyearth.org/
Here's why I find his arguments compelling. 1. He disassembles the "97% of scientists agree" argument as the BS it is. 2. He exposes and calls out legitimate and questionable data fiddling. 3. He calls out BS not-based-in-science predictions. 4. He calls out the politicking in the IPCC report. 5. He, and team, went back and redid analysis without data fiddling and came back with reasonable results. 6. He's willing to talk about what we don't know.
The good bit starts about 6:00 in with the quote: 'The skeptic says "What about data selection bias?" You have to have an answer for that. You can't just say the data is overwhelming, because as it turns out the evidence is not overwhelming. I'll show you that.'
Slashdot Mirror
>> the only reward will be transaction fees.
Miners will make more in transaction fees, if they make the network faster and blocks larger. At today's tiny blocksize you are seeing as much ast 4 BTC/block in fees.
The 1MB/block size limit is illogical in 2017.
>> Bitcoin has proven to be: non-scalable, expensive, and unreliable.
The bitcoin developers and miners have actively chosen to make it this way. It is literally a 5 minute code change to move to one block per minute and 8MB blocks. That'll take it from 4 transactions per second to 300.
The kicker to this is miners will make a lot more money if they do this. Spending BTC is a pain today because of these limitations. Remove the limitations and you get more transactions and fees.
>> The fundamental problem with BitCoin is that the number of transactions it can handle is orders of magnitude below what is necessary for a reasonably liquid currency with a total value in the billions of dollars.
Parent is spot on. The root problems are that there aren't enough transactions in blocks and the blocks aren't frequent enough. The people that insist that Bitcoin should just be a settlement mechanism are stunting the most revolutionary technology in the last 20 years.
I can't understand why miners don't get behind this. The last block to get mined had 4BTC in fees in it. More transactions means more fees. If you triple the number of transactions in the block, that could be 12 BTC or double the block reward. Why is that even a question?
With the utmost of respect my wallaby friend, your argument is based on the idea that we never clean up after ourselves, and we constantly get worse until the point where we will extinguish ourselves entirely.
Perhaps I'm short-sighted or naive, but I don't see that as the case. We feed more people on less land today than we ever have in our history, and our standard of living is better than it has ever been. More importantly, our rate of technical progress is faster than it has ever been.
No, we don't clean up our superfund sites to the way they were before mankind touched them. We can't. Despite that, we are working aggressively not to create new ones. Global production of both PCBs and CFCs is lower now than it has been in decades. Fracking is dramatically cleaner than coal. Water treatment is better than just dumping it into rivers. To my admittedly optimistic eye it does look like we are cleaning up.
There is one area where we aren't cleaning up though, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. That sore spot is global carbon dioxide production. For us to clean this up we need power generation methods that don't require us to dig up dinosaurs and no amount of energy conservation will solve this problem. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in medieval squalor, and they are polluting like crazy just to stay alive. The standard of living for those people will increase, or they will turn to violence and be completely justified in doing so.
So how do you clean this up? You need a power generation method with zero CO2 emissions, and you need it to scale to meet global demands. You need it to not require strip mining the worlds poorest places for rare earths. You need it not to produce long-lived radioactive wastes, and you need it to be dirt cheap, too. That technology is probably space based solar power, and to build it we need a bunch of bigass heavy lift rockets. To build those rockets we have to test smallass heavy lift rockets, and those rockets need a payload. If that payload is a shiny red Tesla from the guy that is going to dominate the renewable energy market in the next decade then I am absolutely fine with cleaning that particular mess up later.
I agree with Mr. Prince, and I respect that he's willing to risk his name and company to stand behind his beliefs.
The Anarchist's cookbook is Illegal in Australia. Possession of the book is enough to get you arrested in the UK. China's great firewall is tighter than ever. Censorship is alive and well in the modern world, and I do not see that as progress.
What happened to: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."?
Let's spitball it at $100 per kilo. That puts it roughly double first-class halfway-round-the-world airfare today. For comparison, the Space Shuttle was $18,000 per kilo. The Falcon 9, to LEO, is $3,000 per kilo.
>> Why the fuck would average joe want to fly to space?
Short List:
>> Do we really want to turn Mars into a publicity stunt laden dumping ground?
Yes. Yes we do.
The only way an average Joe is ever going to get affordable commercial space travel is if the "Only governments can do spaceflight" meme dies a fiery death. Putting a Tesla around Mars is a fantastic way to light that pyre.
If the BFR delivers on its promise of dirt-cheap space travel we can tidy up after ourselves later.
Asgardia, the Space Nation, could get a payload together in time.
>> Most of the "automated vehicle is hacked" type of potential requires direct access to the vehicle in the first place. eg you can hack most CANBUS II equipped vehicles, and insurance companies willingness to adopt CANBUS dongles for insurance purposes is the easy target.
Most, but not all. There have been at least two successful compromises of production vehicles via the IP connected entertainment system. It's also worth noting that RF keyless remote systems are usually directly integrated into the ECU, and there are in-the-wild vehicle-unlocking exploits against those. It is not unimaginable that there are other exploits against that system.
>> Frankly, I'm suprised that a black hat hacker or terrorist hasn't already found a way to hack the autopilot system in a Model S in order to use it as a weapon.
There are some who believe that vehicle hacks have already been militarized and used for targeted killings. Until someone leaks proof, that remains the province of conspiracy theory.
>> fire a rifle round out of a hobby drone..
>> the drone will fly in the opposite direction
>> the lead will stay stationary almost
Conservation of momentum indicates that your assertion is incorrect.
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
>> $500-$1000 quads CAN carry a bit more weight, but at a major reduction in flight time and range, as well as speed and the ability to fly in a stiff breeze. ...
>> You're probably better off just throwing the pipe bomb with your hand.
ISIS has published a highlight reel of effective attacks with the weapons you describe as ineffective or implausible.
The video is here. This shows people dying.
NSFW, NSF-Children, NSF-Snowflakes.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?...
>> They will just define accurate as within a hundred miles of the official target and anyone within that region as enemy.
You aren't wrong. In Afghanistan the definition of a militant for the purpose of counting civilian casualties was "all military-age males in a strike zone".
Said another way, if we blew up a male aged 15-35 it was cool, because he was a "terrorist".
If you haven't seen how Microsoft has changed the new update notes you should seriously have another look.
i.e. https://support.microsoft.com/...
From that one page you can see all of the updates for Windows 10 all the way back to RTM, the KBs for each, and the version numbers for each. It's much better than it used to be.
Part of my day job* is helping my customers figure out why machines have BSODs. Very often this is driver issues. That means I spend a lot of time fishing for new drivers and looking at the release notes.
If I could, I would ask very nicely that driver publishers to include specifics about what issues are fixed when drivers are updated. If you fixed an issue that was causing 0x9 Power state transition failure BSODs in your Video driver, then please put that in the notes. Also, if it's not too much trouble please keep a running history in the changelog so I can open the changelog for version 5.10 and see what changed in 5.10, 5.09, and 5.08 without having to go fish for the release notes for each version.
I would also ask hardware vendors that repackage drivers (e.g. HP and Dell) to publish the original driver release notes instead of just a file that says "Upgrades driver to version x.yy"
* I'm a Windows Platforms DSE for Microsoft. The above is my own opinion, and not that of my employer or paid shilling for them.
>> There are some people who legitimately do a lot of work that legitimately involves lots of meetings but who do not rise to the level of needing a secretary to organize their day for them. For them calendaring is probably useful.
It's not just calendaring. It's "I need to schedule a meeting with these people, when are most of them available, and can I book a conference room too." e.g. Room resource mailboxes and free/busy data.
It's also not-having to remember their email addresses and having an Address list to look them up in and an org chart so you can figure out who the hell wxyyzz is.
It's being able to double-click a name and get the person's phone number, job title, and office location.
It's autoresponses and rules that can be configured in the mail client and work when the client is offline.
It seems stupid, but it's the little headshot pictures in Outlook/Skype for Business that help you know who you are talking to.
It's the ability to delegate mailbox permissions to your admin, and share malboxes among teams.
It's public folders and organizational forms that populate sql databases and PowerBI reports. It's 3rd party product integration for Data Loss Prevention and eDiscovery.
It's a whole bunch of things. Calling it "email and calendars" is calling a cruise ship a boat.
(I work for Microsoft; the above is my opinion and not that of my employer. Yes, I know that because I get a paycheck from them my opinion is automatically invalid. Thanks.)
I have several older Nooks by Barnes and Noble. Out of the box they are bricks until you activate them online.
Damnit, I forgot my disclaimer.
Full Disclosure, I work for Microsoft as a PFE. The above is my own opinion, not paid shilling.
If your child has a .edu email address, they can get office free.
https://products.office.com/en...
For hardware, I have some thoughts.
I just bought my daughter (13) a used Surface Pro 4. She loves to draw, and the touch+pen were killer features for her. She takes care of her kit, and it's in a case so I don't worry about her breaking it.
I, on the other hand, am a klutz. If it were for me I'd buy something that could take more physical abuse. I used to have a Lenovo W520 and W540. I loved those, with the exception of their weight, and would probably look in that family.
Back to Software, whatever browser you choose, get an adblocker. Ad Networks are the primary distribution mechanism for malware now.
Fourteen is old enough to teach them to use a password keeper, and keep the file on dropbox or onedrive. Build that habit now and their future self will thank you.
Create a personal email, e.g. deathlord982 at somedomain.com email and a realname email now. Teach them to use the personal for fun stuff and realname for School stuff. Separating fun and work is a good habit to get into now too.
Teach them to put a post-it over the webcam. Yes, that's a thing.
Other Free software worth getting:
Gimp, Inkscape, VLC, and Paint.Net
You'll probably want the Steam and Origin clients, Discord, and TeamSpeak.
If you want to teach them 3d modeling, ZBrush and AutoDesk Fusion 360 are amazing. I think that both are free for hobbyists.
Good luck.
I chose to log in to my Microsoft live Account on my personal laptop instead of creating a local account.
My primary motivation was so I could store my bitlocker recovery key in the cloud.
I don't regret doing it though. I installed Cortana on my Android phone and signed in there so I could send reminders from my phone to my PC. Now I get a popup on my PC when I get a text message and a warning when the battery on my phone is low. Pretty cool.
Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft as a PFE, but this is not paid shilling. This is on my personal machine, not company kit.
> What's IE? How do you even start IE on a modern Windows 10 machine?
Window Key-R >> iexplore is how I start it, or you can find it on the start menu and pin it where you want.
Unless you have a specific reason to use it though, don't.
The HP laptop I was looking at yesterday in Best buy had the HP Recovery Manager, HP Support Assistant, HP Games Powered by WildTangent, HP ePrint, Netflix, HP CoolSense, McAfee LiveSafe, CyberLink Power Media Player, and Dropbox on it.
It's better, but it's not fixed yet.
FTFY, "5. He, and team, went back and redid analysis without data fiddling and came back with the same results as the IPCC."
Actually, no, you didn't FTFM. The last IPCC report, the one that was marched into the Paris Accords, makes a number of claims that are not based in scientific fact, and he debunks them quite thoroughly. Mr. Muller asserts, and I agree, that you will not convert climate skeptics by lying to them or throwing out doomsday scenarios with million-to-one odds against them happening. The facts are what they are; trying to make them look worse only hurts your credibility.
He speaks about this specifically here:
https://youtu.be/VbR0EPWgkEI?t...
The entire presentation is worth watching, whichever side of the fence you are sitting on.
Question, not trolling.
Wouldn't the hypersonic exhaust of the decelerating engine effectively flush out any gas you put in the trough?
If they get the rockets to land back on their mounts this becomes more workable. Just have the mount spray the rocket.
Landings like this one are exciting. SpaceX wasn't sure they'd be able to land the GTO payload boosters, and they've managed to do it a couple of times now. Sweet!
>> my major complaint is that it is impossible to get correct information from anywhere ... they come up with the conclusion, and then try to find evidence to back it up. That's not how science works.
AC, I agree with you entirely. It's a real problem. I've found one person who speaks about this in an honest data driven way, that is willing to cut through the hype and hyperbole. His name is Dr. Richard Muller at http://berkeleyearth.org/
Here's why I find his arguments compelling.
1. He disassembles the "97% of scientists agree" argument as the BS it is.
2. He exposes and calls out legitimate and questionable data fiddling.
3. He calls out BS not-based-in-science predictions.
4. He calls out the politicking in the IPCC report.
5. He, and team, went back and redid analysis without data fiddling and came back with reasonable results.
6. He's willing to talk about what we don't know.
His presentation "How to convert a climate skeptic" is absolutely worth watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The good bit starts about 6:00 in with the quote: 'The skeptic says "What about data selection bias?" You have to have an answer for that. You can't just say the data is overwhelming, because as it turns out the evidence is not overwhelming. I'll show you that.'